Italians of the Diaspora

Here's an interesting snippet of history I read about my father's town. They tried to start an uprising in 1799 based on the ideals of the French Revolution. Goes to show that despite centuries of foreign-feudalism, there were Italians in the South that wanted to create a new state based on freedom and liberty.
Very interesting, Jovialis. Thanks.

It reminds me an interesting article I read time ago, from William Howard Adams. It shows the influence of the laws of Venice over American Constitution.
The Virginians and the Veneto:
http://www.vqronline.org/essay/virginians-and-veneto
 
Here's an interesting snippet of history I read about my father's town. They tried to start an uprising in 1799 based on the ideals of the French Revolution. Goes to show that despite centuries of foreign-feudalism, there were Italians in the South that wanted to create a new state based on freedom and liberty.

I would much rather celebrate the first great Counter-Revolutionary, the warrior-priest Fabrizio Ruffo.

https://realcasadiborbone.it/en/il-cardinale-ruffo-e-le-insorgenze-filoborboniche/

Or for a highly entertaining work of historical fiction, I would point you to "Ruffo in Calabria" by Peter Nichols, which I have mentioned elsewhere on Eupedia.

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Among Ruffo's ancestors were his namesake, Fabrizio Ruffo, who captured three Ottoman galleys at Candia in 1661, and the great patron of the arts Antonio Ruffo, who sponsored works by Rembrandt, Ribera, Guercino, Salvator Rosa, Van Dyk, Artemisia, and others.

See the discussion of Antonio Ruffo in "Patrons & Painters: A Study in the Relations Between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque" ------>>>> https://books.google.com/books?id=SdOCCFciM7IC&q=ruffo#v=snippet&q=ruffo&f=false


And see this video, in Italian, concerning Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, commissioned by Ruffo

 
Give it a rest. The Bourbon rulers of Sicily and Southern Italy were terrible stewards of the land and the people. Most of the latter lived in appalling conditions until after they were gone.

The same was true for the people of the Veneto under their own oligarchs, unfortunately.

If people knew more history, and didn't substitute ideology for facts, there wouldn't be debate about these things.
 
It is certainly debatable whether Italian unification was good for the South, and, more generally, whether bourgeois rule (post-1789) has been good for the long-term interests of Europe.

I'll side with Lampedusa on this one, thank you.
 
Angela, you and I should meet in person, in NYC, so that you may establish your greater intellect, and I my greater charisma. It is ridiculous for you to refer to ideologues, when in fact the Jacobins were the ideologues. Fabrizio Ruffo was the great defender of traditional, organic society. It gives me great pleasure to inform you that I have his portrait on my wall.
 
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Altamura population then reorganized and embraced the ideals propagated by the French Revolution. The Liberty Tree was also planted in what it was then called piazza del mercato (today it's called piazza Duomo).


In those days, the liberty tree wasn't just a symbol, it had utility. I wonder if the Altamurans used it in the same way. I'd like to learn more about this affair.

Even after the revolution, liberty trees remained a potent symbol of the power of rebellion and public protest. When revolution broke out in France in 1789, revolutionaries began to name and plant their own liberty trees, and the custom also sprang up in Italy and Germany.

https://www.history.com/news/liberty-trees-symbol-revolutionary-war
 
Angela, my apologies. I was rather drunk when I addressed you in my last post here (#88 on this thread). I was pixilated by an orange wine, Albana di Romagna, which I recommend, albeit in moderation. But yes, I do in fact have reproductions of portraits of Cardinal Ruffo and Roger II on my wall.

Jovialis, you really should read the Peter Nichols novel, it's pretty even-handed and about the only extensive treatment of this episode in Southern Italian history that you are likely to find in English.
 
I'm hardly the kind of person who would have been in favor of the extreme Jacobins. I strike you as the kind of person who would have supported the Terror in Paris? Neither, however, would I ever lionize reactionaries. They instituted their own reign of terror, which you conveniently fail to mention, and not only in Italy.

Sometimes it seems to me that the main difference between the Nazis and the Communists is that the Eastern European Communists weren't as organized and industrialized as the German Fascists, and they didn't have that sick obsession with ethnicity. Same in Cuba, Southeast Asia, you name it. Also, of course, the media always hid and continues to hide the evil that the Communists perpetrated. It still goes on today. Just the other day I heard someone speak approvingly of Lillian Hellman. I find it amazing. She was a complete apologist for evil of the worst kind.

That's why extremists on both sides of the political spectrum are dangerous and must be answered, and why people must work against the implementation of their political agendas.

We now know where you stand. There will be no propagandizing of extreme ideologies here, neither of the left or the right.

Keep to academic subjects, or at least non political ones, and try to keep commentary as objective and free of biases as possible.
 
Angela, perhaps my link to the Bourbon website was unfortunate, but I thought it gave a nice account of Cardinal Ruffo. I am not a Neo-Bourbon fanatic, and the Ruffo family in any case goes back to Norman times, if not further (some say Byzantine antecedents).

And I suspect you are unfamiliar with Peter Nichols. His book on Cardinal Ruffo hardly qualifies as propaganda. The mood of the book is one of deep ambivalence, and told from the perspective of a fictitious schoolteacher who accompanied Ruffo on his campaign. The teacher serves as Ruffo's emissary to Crotone and, yes, Altamura, which is why the book should be of particular interest to Jovialis.

Peter Nichols is also the author of "Politics of the Vatican" (1967) and "Italia, Italia" (1974)

This is the Kirkus Review of "Italia, Italia" ----> https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/peter-nichols-3/italia-italia/

And this is the Kirkus Review of "Politics of the Vatican" ---->https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/peter-nichols-2/the-politics-of-the-vatican/

But yes, your instincts about me (as opposed to Nichols) are accurate insofar as I do not support the political center or our current elites, who are pretty damn dangerous, nay, destructive, and have been left unanswered for far too long.

And that is all I shall say. My apologies for responding to Jovialis in good faith, who, I should point out, raised this "non academic" subject.
 

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